Rob Walker writes about technology, design, business, the arts, and other subjects. His column The Workologist appears in The New York Times Sunday Business section. Previously he wrote the Consumed column for The New York Times Magazine, and has contributed to many publications. He is co-editor (with Joshua Glenn) of the book Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things, and author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are.

Statement

My interests — in the context of writing about design, visual culture, or anything else — tend toward subjects that strike me as being overlooked, underrated, nearly invisible. And I don’t just mean overlooked in general; I mean (previously) overlooked by me.

I’m interested, then, in neglected objects and abandoned buildings, stealthy iconography and obscured infrastructure. I try to see what nobody else is trying to make me see, to notice what’s forgotten in the corner, or hiding in plain sight — whether it’s something delightful, or something awful. And I try to notice the work of others who do all of this better than I can.

I do not pretend this makes me unique: It may be a description that almost any design observer, as it were, would embrace. But to the extent that I can suggest a throughline connecting the specific subjects I feel compelled to investigate and consider — security cameras, the yellow penalty card, the Google Maps pin, defaced Neighborhood Watch signage, worn-out gizmos, oddball Tumblrs, cigarette packaging, 3D-printed weapons — this is what I can offer.

Maybe all I’m really doing is trying to have a good time as I strive to see the world more clearly. So I write about what I believe I will enjoy writing about. And of course I hope that results in something that you, perhaps, will enjoy reading.

In a recent issue of The M.I.T. Sloan Management Review, Michael Schrage, a business writer and an M.I.T. researcher, challenged what Bruce Greenwald, has said about the fate of all innovative technologies: “In the long run, everything is a toaster.”